5. Introduction

The main pgModeler's feature, the database modeling, would be almost useless if the export, import and diff don't exist. This because often the user who is handling a database model need to do real tests of the structure being created by exporting the model to a server in order to make the needed validations. In other moments, the user needs to generate a graphical representation from an existent database which was not generated from a model so the reverse engineering will be used in order to achieve the desired result.

Now, in order to keep any changes synchronized between the model and the database the user will need to run the diff process which will analyze them pointing out any divergences and generating the needed code to keep the involved entities almost the same. For that reasons these features are of great importance in the modeling process as a whole.

Since some of these operations are “invasive” to the database, to be able to execute them without any issues it is needed at least one connection configured with a privileged user. A privileged user is not necessarily the superuser but a role that is capable to create a database (for export process) and with privileges to read the system catalogs (in case of import). Refer to previous chapter, section Connections settings, to see how to configure connections in pgModeler.

In order to open the export dialog, use the menu File > Export or just click the icon located on the left tool bar at the main window. In the same way, the import dialog can be activated through the menu File > Import or by clicking the icon . Finally, to trigger the diff dialog use the File > Diff or click the icon .


Mar 20, 2020 at 14:00